Invited to Witness

“Invited to Witness charts urgent new territory in the fields of Palestine studies, colonial/empire studies, feminist studies, and ethnic studies. Through her brilliantly nuanced and incomparably accountable analysis, Jennifer Lynn Kelly will transform how scholars and activists approach Palestine and the politics of solidarity and resistance more broadly.” - Nadine Naber, Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies and Global Asian Studies, University of Illinois at Chicago

“Invited to Witness is an impressively researched work of interdisciplinary scholarship that offers a nuanced critique of tourism and the practices that can provide means of survival, solidarity, and resistance for Palestinians. It also has broad implications for thinking about the concept of ‘invitation’ that lies at the heart of one of our biggest and most volatile global industries.” - Vernadette Vicuña Gonzalez, author of Securing Paradise: Tourism and Militarism in Hawai'i and the Philippines

“In this sophisticated academic study, Jennifer Lynn Kelly probes the complexities of solidarity tourism in Palestine. . . . Kelly’s impressive field research yields a nuanced analysis rather than an uncritical celebration of solidarity tourism." - Walter L. Hixson, Washington Report on Middle East Affairs

"This book offers deep insights into the Palestinian memories of loss, and the cultural boundaries between insiders and outsiders. . . . The author succeeds in using a variety of materials (interviews, films, history, literature, etc.), mobilizing different tools of cultural studies to reveal the impasses of telling the past and the present of Palestine." - Abdessamad Belhaj, Social Identities

"Kelly makes a major contribution to the study of so-called solidarity tourism in Palestine, exploring its well-researched effect on national identity, lived experience, political strategy, and economic influence throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territories. . . . Highly recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty."
  - B. Osborne, Choice

"Invited to Witness: Solidarity Tourism Across Occupied Palestine is an exemplary work of cultural studies that is attuned to deep history and sometimes cursory visitors, that treats solidarity tourism studies tourism with nuanced ambivalence." - Neville Hoad, E3W Review of Books

"A guide to how non-Palestinian researchers can conduct research that neither essentializes or erases Palestinian knowledge and experience. … Kelly's book is a welcome addition to the literature on global phenomenon in Palestine."

"[Kelly's book] will inspire students to examine the past and benevolently imagine the future unflinchingly." - Lynne Rogers, Al Jadid

"Kelly’s Invited to Witness is ripe with Palestinian moments that speak of the intricacy, beauty, and courage embedded in our ways of being and doing things. . . . the most illuminating aspect of Kelly’s book becomes what she herself represents in her study: a cultural translator, a US citizen writing to other 'Americans' about the responsibility involved in visiting and writing about Palestine. You cannot just witness it—you have to actively pursue its liberation and reflect it in your actions, scholarship, and your intentional conversations with others." - Eman Ghanayem, Public Books

"Invited to Witness is a brilliant innovative study of Palestinian resistance. . . . Invited to Witness is a valuable addition to the scholarship about Palestine and Palestinian resistance in the face of this intractable conflict. It would be of interest to scholars and students of Palestine and Middle East studies, history, political science, anthropology, and peace and conflict resolution." - Arab Studies Quarterly

"Invited to Witness is a compelling book which helps to illuminate this Palestinian pedagogy of teaching life, a life of joy and solidarity in struggle, committed to active, intersectional decolonial practice and offering a gift of insights which Kelly has worked so effectively to share with us." - Freya Higgins-Desbiolles, Journal of Tourism History

"Invited to Witness offers the first in-depth monograph focused specifically on solidarity tourism in Palestine. Kelly’s interdisciplinary book makes invaluable contributions to this expanding subfield in its well-researched and carefully argued analysis of solidarity tourism as an ambivalently pursued anticolonial strategy and industry." - Maryam S. Griffin, Mobilization

"Invited to Witness will be powerful for advanced undergraduates and graduate students alike. It is a brilliant contribution to scholarly debates about tourism, solidarity, and Palestinian resistance, while also providing astute reflections on internationalist organizing strategies." - Christopher Courtheyn, Antipode

"Invited to Witness is a timely and informative look at conditions on the ground in occupied Palestine. . . . An urgent book for understanding how despite overwhelming material evidence, the Western world has turned a blind eye to Israeli violence."